OK, Let's Talk About Iraq
Tom Friedman writes in today's New York Times that the answer in Iraq is to "double the American boots on the ground." Ivo (and my other good friends and former colleagues at Brookings, Jim Steinberg and Michael O'Hanlon) propose withdrawing U.S. troops. It strikes me as too late to try Friedman's strategy, and to early to try Ivo's.
Sending in more troops has the virtue of allowing us to say we didn't back down to the insurgents. But where are we going to get the additional troops to send? And what exactly are they supposed to do when they get there? An unsustainable deployment that provides Iraqi insurgents with more targets or alienates more Iraqis would just compound our problems.
Conversely, troop withdrawals have the merit of getting U.S. troops out of harm's way. But it would almost certainly embolden the insurgents--after all, it confirms their basic operating premise that they don't have to defeat the Americans, just outlast them. Withdrawal would probably derail Iraq's political reconciliation process (though the Iraqis seem to be doing a good job of that themselves). If the Kurds and the Shiites conclude that Washington has given up on Iraq, they might too. In that event, Iraq's descent into a bloody civil war isn't far-fetched. Perhaps that war would remain confined within Iraq's borders, and we would be untouched by the bloodshed that follows. But given that all of Iraq's neighbors have a stake in seeing its co-religionists win or its ethnic rivals lose, perhaps not. If so, the repercussions for U.S. economic and geo-political interests would be immense.
So process of elimination leaves me with staying the course. I'm not especially comfortable with that position, even if it is tempered with calls for the U.S. military to run better counter-insurgency operations or supplemented with pleas to the Bush administration to put greater pressure on the Iraqis write a constitution. "Stay-the-course" arguments always leave you wondering when perseverance has turned into pigheadedness. But for now, staying the course looks to provide our best chance for leaving Iraq with a semblance of a stable government.
Time could prove me wrong. It may be the case that no matter what we do we will get a nightmare outcome in Iraq. So if in six months the insurgency has continued to increase and we are no closer to a permanent Iraqi government, then it will be time to talk about cutting our losses.
Comments (21)
So process of elimination leaves me with staying the course.
Boy, I bet Bush was really sweating Jim's lucubrations on this one.
June 15, 2005 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
More boots on the ground will only cause more US casualties and nothing more. The new Iraqi government needs to get it's act together and get going with governing. More Sunni participation in the government would probably help the credibility of the government also.
June 15, 2005 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Friedman wants to have a draft, and wants the Dems to sit by and let Bush do it. I think that's the point of his article.
He's been harping on this while, that the liberals should logically support Bush over Iraq.
June 15, 2005 8:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Twice as many troops could not clamp down on Iraq anything like Israel controls the West Bank. They would have no effect on suicide bombers at all.
This leads us to ask what our troops are currently accomplishing. Despite the recent advent of body counts of dead bad people, I think the answer is not very much.
Mr. Lindsey suggests that we are preventing a civil war, but I see little evidence of this. Our leaving would make little change for those who simply wish to disrupt a new Iraqi society. But, for Iraqi security forces and others who want stability, our departure would be motivating and free them from the stigma of merely supporting the US agenda.
June 15, 2005 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with Jim that staying the course, at this point, is the best of a bad lot of options, but at what point do you begin to think about withdrawing? It seems to me we need to (privately, not publicly, to avoid emboldening the insurgents) decide what a reasonable timetable is for accomplishing our goals. Look, if you could guarantee that staying one more year meant that a democratic Iraq could survive, it's clearly worth it to stay; if you knew that it would take ten years for a democratic Iraq to survive, it's clearly not worth it. At some point we have to set goals or standards for progress, which, if we don't meet, we begin to think seriously about withdrawing.
June 15, 2005 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think we should pull out immediately -- we should at least wait a bit to give the constitution-drafting process a chance to work (or not).
A U.S. withdrawal timetable, though, would put serious pressure on the Sunni leadership to come to the table and bargain seriously about the constitution. They know good and well that 1) the Shi'ites outnumber them, and 2) the Shi'ites (at least a good number of them) are being held back by the U.S. presence. If we left, they would be freed up to fight as Shi'ites, rather than as part of a multiconfessional national guard. Most of the people joining the Iraqi security forces now are just there to collect a paycheck, but there are plenty of people in Sadr City and Basra who would jump at the chance to go up to the Sunni Triangle and go after the kinfolk of the people who did such awful things to their kinfolk under the Baath regime.Ibrahim al-Jafari's comments a week ago (which drew little notice in the U.S.) about the need to maintain the Shi'ite militias like the Badr Brigades, etc, reinforces this. They'd be free to do a lot of things that U.S. troops wouldn't do (and I'm not endorsing this, but that's the way it would likely play out), and the Sunni leaders must fear that.
Cut a deal now and rein in your own hotheads, or the alternative is that we may leave you to the tender mercies of your previous victims.
Again, I don't want to see this awful scenario play out -- but it probably will if we do leave in the future, and having a timetable for withdrawal would put the Sunnis' fear of this to use in a way which might avoid it.
June 15, 2005 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you're going to talk about "staying the course", then you should define what exactly that entails. I don't even think the Bush administration is sure, and most days it seems they are wandering through the fog while blaming the Democrats for not following them. It's a blind leading the blind mentality.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, but but before we talk about more or less troops or even staying the course, we need clearer priorities, a better set of measurements for success or failure and greater public access to information about what's going on. Those are fairly concrete things the Democrats can push for today, even from the minority party position.
June 15, 2005 8:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jim Let's see in 6 months? I am amazed experts like you still don't get it. How long can you go on never drawing the obvious conclusion? The war is lost. To use that annoying Friedmanesque phrase, which part of "We lost" don't you understand?
Jim's fence sitting is exactly what's wrong with the Dems. Incapable of taking a stand, incapable of articulating a vision, incapable of showing any sort of self-confidence.
>> Embolden the insurgents.
That's talk from someone who, with all due respect, understands nothing about insurgency. American presence is what emboldens the insurgents.
If I am proven wrong and Jim right, I'll eat his hat!June 15, 2005 9:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Matt Taibbi's skewering of the NYTimes' resident genius, here it is.
June 15, 2005 9:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
So true. Whatever Thom Friedman says, thinks or predicts, the opposite must be true. He is the George Castanza of punditry. The only possible reason to seriously regard anything he has to say is because he owns a patch of prime real estate in the MSM. The news talk shows love him because he seems so committed to his views and comes off as a true believer, even if the belief is only in his own little dreamworld reality. Plus, his metaphors, anecdotes and homilies are so darn audiogenic. They sound good, but they don't make him right. About anything.
June 15, 2005 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Friedman wants to have a draft, and wants the Dems to sit by and let Bush do it.
A better idea is to call on Bush to call for more volunteers to serve in the military... specifically from amongst those families who supported his war and even more specifically, from those who think more boots are needed on the ground.
June 15, 2005 9:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Any significant amount of troops will mean a draft, and that won't go over. Besides, why send more troops to fit a plan that is flawed? No solution from the U.S. government will be accepted by the Iraqis, because they don't like us. I think it is time to let the Iraqis fight for their own lives. If they truly want a democracy, they will fight and make sure it happens. If they don't, they won't. At some point, they have to make their own future. Why not now?
June 15, 2005 10:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Friedman has one really good point in his piece: training armies is overrated. We trained the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam for 13 years; they had over a million men under arms when we left, with better equipment than the North. When the NVA rolled in in 1975, those million men desultorily fought a few losing engagements, then dropped their weapons and ran.
Training doesn't mean much to an army that isn't organically connected to a legitimate government that enjoys popular allegiance. And one election doesn't make a government legitimate. If soldiers feel they're fighting for a bunch of squabbling schemers who can't get their act together and ultimately will collapse and fail to protect them or their families, they will make a rational decision and desert. They'll either join ethnic or religious militias - who, for all their failings, can and do fight to protect their own - or they'll strip off their uniforms, go home to hide, and claim to have spent the last two years farming chickens.
This is what you see in NGO work all the time: training people in technical skills can only go so far, if the populations they're serving don't WANT those technical skills. You can train people in how to put on a condom, but unless the village ASKED you to help them stop HIV, they won't wear the things. It has to be driven by stakeholder demand. In Iraq, we are pushing the government to take all these steps, we are pushing the training of the army, we are trying to command a unified Iraq into being. That is impossible. What we are looking at in Iraq is civil war, and it is going to have to rage until one side wins or the borders are redrawn, because, unlike in Bosnia, we have neither the troops nor the international legitimacy to impose a settlement.
June 15, 2005 11:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem with "staying the course" is that it is the surest path to the dreaded "Vietnamization" of Iraq.
In retrospect, two sensible voices emerged during the Vietnam War. Early in the game, Barry Goldwater said: "If we're going to do this, let's do it right and fight to win." Much later, George McGovern said: "We're obviously not willing to fight to win, so we might as well pack up and go home." Neither one earned the support of more than about a third of the American people, and I suspect that the number of people who supported both Goldwater '64 and McGovern '72 was vanishingly small. Instead, candidates favoring a manageable, limited war leading to a negotiated settlement short of victory and eventual peace with honor cruised to two landslides. End result? We didn't win, we came home too late, the negotiated settlement failed, there was no peace, and we did not leave with honor.
Friedman's "send more troops" advocacy (with which I agree, though we may differ on some specifics) follows the Goldwater edict: fight to win.
Steinberg and O'Hanlon's "withdrawal" advocacy follows the McGovern edict: We've already blown it, so let's go home. (Though in all fairness, they advocate an orderly withdrawal rather than simple abandonment of the venture).
Bush's "the course" talks a good game about defending human rights in the face of tyranny, but refuses to allocate appropriate resources. We are fighting a limited war with limited rules of engagement and limited resources against an enemy seeking total victory at all costs.
With all due respect to Jim, were a Democratic leadership who took his advice and "stayed the course" would simply inherit the war. Remember--what was once "Johnson's War" became "Nixon's War." As Johnson and Nixon (and Bush) demonstrated, supporting a limited war may win elections. It is disastrous, however, for both the U.S. and the people we claim to be helping.
June 16, 2005 5:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Informationist is right on target. Both Friedman and the Brookings Institution offer much more credible options than "stay the course." That's the Bush administration answer, and it's clearly not working, as rising casualties and continued instability show.
We should double the amount of troops in theater, with the identified target that this is a short-term exercise with an " all troops out of Iraq" date of 10/06. The troops are ready, and if we kept this exercise limited to a year, it is executable. What this strategy entails though is the troubling issue of dealing with other "hot spots" in the world - clearly this force cannot handle two major conflicts at once.
What would they do? Clamp down on loose ammunition and guns, protect critical infrastructure, and accelerate the training of Iraqi troops. Create an environment by which the social and political structures within Iraq can stabilize, at least temporarily. Then plan for an orderly withdrawal, while providing adequate security for those forces in theater. This is an executable strategy and allows for the US govt to at least retain its dignity and declare success at the risk of letting the Iraqi govt decide its own fate in the near term.
June 16, 2005 5:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Israel has a lot of troops still there are suicide bombers.
England still had the IRA insurgency.
Philippines still has an communist and a muslim seperatist insurgency. So with many Latin American countries like Columbia or Peru.
Unless you have martial law or rule like Saddam did with fear, it will be hard and long to control an insurgency that is complicated with islamic extremist elements.
America should not have invaded Iraq unless they were prepared to deal with nation building and a prolonged insurgency. It was the most costly way to effect regime change or spread democracy. We should have just contained him like we did with LIBYA or Fidel Castro or sponsored a popular uprising/coupde tat with clear transfer of power.
June 16, 2005 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is the first really new idea I have read here about Iraq. If an American forced formation of an American trained military is not going to work in Iraq, and it seems obvious it won't, then our only real choice is about when we withdraw and admit defeat there. If we wait until a Democratic President is in charge that will be a wonderful gift to the Republicans. For that reason alone, we need to pressure the Republicans to make the inevitable decision and take full blame or credit for their invasion and its consequences.
I have full confidence that our Democratic Party leaders will make the wrong decision in this matter.
June 16, 2005 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jason, you talk nonsense. We cannot "double the amount of troops in theater", as we don't have that many troops. Pulling all remaining roops out of Europe and South Korea wouldn't be enough. Even maintaining current numbers is requiring multi-year deployments from reserve and National Guard troops, and these people are needed for other things. We in the West normally rely on the National Guard if we have a bad fire season, and they simply aren't available, to give just one example. You are wrong in claiming that the troops are ready.
"Clamp down on loose ammunition"? Are you kidding me? The horse has already left that barn; we allowed essentially all of Saddam's massive arsenal to fall into insurgent hands. That's why they have an endless supply of RPGs.
Protect critical infrastructure? We can't even secure the road to the airport. Accelerate training of troops? Association with the US occupiers make the trainees appear as puppets, and they are ratted on and killed, or desert in large numbers.
But the real reason why we are doomed is that people like you speak of "dignity". Nixon could have gotten the same deal in 1969 that he took in 1973, after 20 thousand more Americans died. But he was worried about dignity, "peace with honor", not being perceived to lose, so he waited until after his re-election.
June 17, 2005 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believe the key to stabilizing Iraq is in the area of reconstruction. It is virtually impossible to stabilize a country that still does not have dependable electricity, running water, sanitation, infrastructure... Utopia won't be born in a rubble heap.
More importantly, the average Iraqi citizen sees no improvement in the actual functioning of the country, so why would they have faith in the outcome and risk showing support for the occupiers. If they start seeing an actual country being built, I believe they'll be much more likely to stop harboring, supporting or just plain allowing terrorists to roam free. They need something to stand up for. And we're the ones who said we'd build it.
To that end, the U.S. has given literally billions and billions to contractors in Iraq, and the results have been zip. Dada. Bupkuss. Not to mention the fact that some 9 Billion has just gone "missing."
So, the first thing that needs to be done, if we're ever going to remove ourselves from that pit, is for Congress to grow a testicle and demand a full accounting of where the money is going, determine an operational structure to keep track of it, and generally light a fire under "reconnstruction efforts."
Having said all that, it's difficult to imagine securing the country sufficiently to accomplish this without more troops... I don't think we need to put it in the papers... just quietly start sending in more troops to maintain security and move forward on construction in one part of the country at a time...
I believe that if Iraqis start seeing even the slightest progress in rebuilding their country, that provides our best hope for changing the dynamic there.
Without that progress, there is absolutely nothing to move us from where we are today to any better place in five years.
June 21, 2005 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
The U.S. will lose, in fact already has lost, the War. The Americans will leave the country in the same way as the Soviets left Afghanistan; that, is, with the Iraqi guerrillas jeering at them. The only question is how long it will take and how much prestige can still be saved from the ruins.
Juan Cole quotes a report in Al Hayat today:
[Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi, prominent AMS/sunni]described the meeting held recently by Iraqi Vice-Prime Minister Ahmad al-Chalabi with the leadership of the AMS as "a step toward the dialogue with al-Jaafari's Government." He said also that "al-Chalabi agrees with our position calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops... We told him that we won't join the political process as long as State terror is carried on in al-Qa'im, al-Anbar and Baghdad districts."
He maintained that "the patriotic camp calling for the withdrawal of occupation forces and for quickly establishing a timetable for their withdrawal has become larger than anytime before."
Al-Hayat has learned from other sources that there is a current within the Government holding a position in favor of a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops.
This current, of which al-Chalabi is a prominent member, has accused American parties of refusing the idea of concluding an agreement on the status of foreign troops, and of wanting to preserve the current status quo. '
One year later, the resistance is stronger, the insurgency has steadily increased
Too early?????
June 26, 2005 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="90%" border="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="90%" border="0"><tr><td width="100%">Into the Abyss
Martin van Creveld
7/29/04
Al-Hayat on US contacts with AMS
Chalabi Favors Timeline for US Withdrawal
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</td></tr></table></td></tr></table>June 26, 2005 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink